Providence gang member gets life sentence for role in murder of 12-year-old girl, triple shooting

Amanda Milkovits Journal Staff Writer amandamilkovits

Saturday

Sep 28, 2013 at 12:00 AM

Ricardo Vasquez, one of the five gang members accused in a shooting that killed a 12-year-old girl and wounded three women at a graduation party in June, has been sentenced to life in prison.

PROVIDENCE — One of the five gang members accused in a shooting that killed a 12-year-old girl and wounded three women at a graduation party in June has been sentenced to life in prison.

Ricardo Vasquez, 20, pleaded guilty in Superior Court on Friday to the murder, triple shooting, and conspiracy — just two days after he and four other young men were indicted for the crimes. Four charges of firing a gun were dismissed under the plea agreement.

The parents of Aynis Vargas, 12, showed Judge Robert D. Krause her photo from sixth grade. In a statement read by Special Assistant Attorney General James Baum, Aynis’ parents said it had been an honor having her in their lives.

“Aynis was a good daughter,” Baum read to the judge.

Vasquez declined to make a statement. His mother and girlfriend didn’t attend the sentencing. His tearful father sat at the back of the courtroom, far from Aynis’ family and one of the shooting victims. Ricardo Quinones, 44, has been in and out of prison for most of his son’s life, and was last released in May. He stared at his son, who didn’t look back at him.

When it was over, Quinones rushed out of the courtroom, as his son’s lawyer, Judith Crowell, shook hands with the girl’s mother.

The Providence police say the five men charged in the fatal shooting are part of the Harriet Street gang, or H-Block, in the city’s South Side. That gang has been warring for years with the Hartford Soldiers gang, based in the Hartford Park housing projects on the other side of the city.

The fatal shooting late on June 15, the day before Father’s Day, started over a broken window in Vasquez’s minivan.

The Hartford gang was blamed for the vandalism. Vasquez and four other young men in the Harriet Street gang went out that night for revenge, Baum told the court.

As Vasquez drove his distinctive looking minivan around the Hartford projects, they saw a party outside 256 Hartford Ave., Baum said. Vasquez parked and a gunman — whom he named as Branden Castro, 21 — got out and headed to the gathering, Baum said.

There was Aynis and her mother, and other relatives, at a high school graduation party for a young friend. Aynis was a bright, cheerful and loving girl who’d recently celebrated her own sixth-grade {+t}{+h} grade graduation.

Aynis was standing up to talk to her mother when a masked gunman walked into the group and shot her in the neck. The dying girl collapsed into her mother’s arms.

Although the families and police asked the public for help, no one came forward. But Vasquez’s own actions gave him away, the police say, from reporting his minivan stolen to hide his culpability, and texting his girlfriend about the shooting, according to court affidavits.

Vasquez and Castro were arrested in July; Castro is expected to be arraigned in Superior Court on Friday.

Three other young men were arrested Wednesday shortly after the indictments. Angel Valerio, 19, who calls himself “Young Cyph,” and Luis Gonzalez, 23, known as “Fat Boy,” were arraigned Thursday and ordered held without bail. An 18-year-old relative of Gonzalez, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, was arraigned at Family Court. The attorney general will seek to have him tried as an adult.

The judge sentenced Vasquez to life in prison for murder, plus 20 years for three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, and 10 years for two counts of conspiracy. The sentences will run concurrently. With life in prison, the earliest Vasquez could apply for parole is after he serves 20 years.

Aynis’ father said later that he felt good that one of the men was already sentenced to prison. Teomel Vargas said the arrests sent a strong message to all gangs — the police will track down everyone involved in deadly plots, not just the person who pulled the trigger.

Vargas said he didn’t need to hear anything from Vasquez. What the young man has to say doesn’t matter.

“I only want one thing,” Vargas said. “I just want justice.”

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